ABSTRACT
A lot of literature on driver behaviour tends to be restricted to the examination of a very limited set of variables. It might be argued that this focus is necessary in order to determine the importance of key variables, but, at the same time, it does not completely represent the complexity that exists between variables in the world at large. If you lower mental workload, does situational awareness suffer? If you have a high locus of control, will you be more likely to disuse automation and give yourself the chance to lower workload (and SA?) in the first place? What is needed is a conceptual model of driving psychology that links key variables together to examine their collective effects in different situations. That is the purpose of this chapter – to identify the relevant the psychological variables and, on the basis of the literature, to propose a psychological model associated with the operation of automated systems. So we change tack. In this chapter we will introduce the key variables and the key interrelationships which in subsequent chapters we explore in more detail to extract vehicle design insights.
